“Cada segundo cuenta (every second counts),” said Juan Manuel Santos, former President of Colombia, as the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved their symbolic “Doomsday Clock” one second closer to midnight on January 28th of this year.
By Timmon Wallis for Pressenza
Although the overall goal of the Doomsday Clock is to highlight how close the world is to nuclear holocaust, President Santos’ guest lecture at this year’s unveiling of the Clock was about hope. He spoke about the global momentum behind the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) and urged all countries to join it.
Half the world’s nations have so far either signed or ratified this new treaty. Indonesia, the fourth most populous country in the world, just became a party to the treaty last month. There are currently 73 states parties to the treaty, with another 25 countries, including Colombia, still going through the ratification process in their respective parliaments or legislatures.
The TPNW prohibits everything to do with nuclear weapons and provides a legally-binding and verifiable pathway for the elimination of all nuclear weapons held by just nine countries (US, Russia, UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea).
Despite the backward steps by all nine of these countries to further develop their nuclear arsenals at the moment, President Santos insisted that these steps “are not irreversible.” He went on to note the remarks made by President Trump just a few days earlier, when he announced to the World Economic Forum in Davos that he wanted to see the world “denuclearize.”
Whatever Trump may have meant by that, or whatever he may or may not have in mind to actually do about it, the idea of denuclearization and the goal of achieving the total elimination of these weapons before they eliminate us is surely to be welcomed.
In its own response to the doomsday clock, the activist group CodePink has launched a “Peace Clock” designed to focus on the steps needed to eliminate the nuclear threat, rather than on the steps being taken that bring us even closer to doomsday. Getting more countries to join the TPNW is certainly one possible step in the right direction, as is raising more awareness in the United States about the goal of denuclearization and how it can be achieved.
CodePink’s Peace Clock emphasizes, as did President Santos, the importance of talks and negotiations between the US and Russia, between the US and China, between the US and Iran. We cannot make the world safer without national leaders of these countries talking to each other. But there is also a huge amount we can do as ordinary citizens – to raise awareness of this issue, to urge our politicians to take it more seriously, and to put all the pressure we can on what Peace Clock organizer Alice Slater calls the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academic-Think Tank Complex, or MICIMATT.
Whether we focus on the dangers or on the hopeful steps that can be taken, one thing is for sure: Cada segundo cuenta!
